an emotional reaction

I just recently become thoroughly convinced that one should never react to something while feeling emotional. One, that is defined as an aspiring lawyer or any person who seeks the most effective way to extricate from trouble, long-term and short-term.

The fact is that no matter how perfectly articulated and reasonable you think your reaction is, the other side's feeling is inevitably neglected or overlooked while you respond with all that indignation stifled in your throat. And really to reach a most satisfying solution, the other side's feeling is something critical to factor in even though they are the original perpetrator, the provoker, or the attacker, ok perhaps, not the attacker.

If the emotion you feel is just slight annoyance or even indignation in a business context, a response under emotional influence is driving you further away from your goal. To start with, you lose the ability to think laterally while being emotional. Then, you tend to overlook the fact that the other side has common human feelings. This leads to unintended negativity to be generated where you least suspect. Soon, the wind will not be blowing in your favour.

This is not to say that you should compromise your rights to please or pacify the other party who is clearly in the wrong. Simply put, when your response is considered and measured with the other party's feeling/face always taken into proper consideration, your response will be generally well received.

Ok, this is really a lesson learnt from my recent experience. For privacy reasons, I will not put it down. "Never react when you are feeling the urge to react." is the one motto I take out of this unpleasant experience to which my emotion is 20% responsible. :) (but hey, being harassed every Saturday morning!)

Next time it happens, I'll just shut down my phones, emails and all other instant communications and take out my old rusty tick clock and sit down for 5 minutes doing nothing.